Leopard Install Went Well Except…
Last week I decided to take the plunge and install Leopard on my iMac. Overall it went very well, except for Garage Band 4.1 included with iLife 08. It would crash on launch. It would get to the final phase of initializing and then BOOM, unexpected error. After several hours on the phone with Apple tech support and three re-installs of Leopard I was able to get GarageBand working on a clean install, but NOT after I imported my user settings from my back-up. 
It doesn’t even start up in the Administrator account after settings are transferred (I run as a limited user). Obviously it’s a system level problem unique to my user settings. Probably some MIDI conflict or audio drivers, perhaps left over from my Pro Tools install. It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
My other problem was not related to the install, but with how iWeb 08 manages files. They completely changed the folder structure when you publish (something over which you have no control). That would be fine, but since I publish to my own server, not .Mac, I need my podcast RSS feed to be in the same folder as the old feed, and it wasn’t. I could change it manually, but then the other links to the media would be incorrect. Basically it’s a rats nest of links and folders so you absolutely cannot change the folders you put stuff in. You have to let iWeb do it all, or nothing. So I decided to move my other podcast over to Podshow. It’s much easier to maintain, and I don’t have to worry about writing xml code, which is enough to make you totally crazy after awhile.
So my sites are here…
The other benefit of publishing with Podshow, is I don’t have to worry about bandwidth. I wasn’t doing too bad with usage, but I could get some real slowdowns uploading to my server, which tends to be really slow if I’m uploading while others are downloading.
At the end of it all, I love Leopard. Apple tech support, although I gave up on Garage Band 08, was impressive. Very friendly, and what they told me to do was correct. I did get the program working, just not with my user settings. And with all things related to trouble shooting software, there comes a point where it just isn’t worth your time and aggravation. Hopefully some update will come along and one day I will just notice it working. I will say this however. If you’re upgrading to Leopard, make sure you have a bootable backup of Tiger with a Firewire drive BEFORE you install Leopard. Use Super Duper. I would not have been able to troubleshoot this without that. By the way, I did a Clean Install. I also tried an Archive and Install. I would recommend a Clean Install and just transfer your Account settings from your backup either during install or with Migration Assistant after. However, a friend also installed Leopard, and he used Upgrade and had no problems at all. And his Garage Band 4.1 works fine. Computers…arrgh.
Filed under: Leopard, apple, garageband
Have exactly the same problem with Leopard and garageband, since upgrading to Leopard, Garageband is dead from the neck up …..really annoying as I’ve just got a MIDi (Via USB) Edirol PCR30 keyboard as one of my xmas pressies!!
Am most chuffed off as I can’t even run garageband without the keyboard plugged in just hangs and ‘makes audio popping sounds’ ..force quit game over!!
Hope there is an update for this soon.
John